FilmIndia (1940)

May, 1940 F I L 1 1 1 N D I A A BETTER ADVANTAGE But not so in a motion picture. It is in the hands of the film director to build up his story, to stress the essentials he desires and to convey to his audience exactly what he desires. In short in our particular case, always more important that the actual presentation is the manner or the technique of the presentation. For consider, a director of the photo-play has firstly the advantage of a script writer who not only writes his dialogues and songs but alro arranges (or should arrange) his scenes and its different shots. This is step No. 1 in leading the attention of the audience into predetermined spots. He has then a choice of varied camera angles and positions each tending to stress the points desired. As an instance we will quote from a recent Paul Muni film, "We Are Not Alone." A man and a woman are accused of poisoning another woman, but both are innocent. What really happens is that the murdered woman who is an aspirin addict herself takes the wrong pills from the aspirin bottle. How those pills come into the aspirin bottle is the result of another accident but with this we are not concerned at present. It was necessary to establish first that the woman was really an addict. Although the murder, or the death, to be more exact, takes place in the latter part of the story, from the very beginning our attention is led to the fact of the woman being actually an addict by means of several very effective shots. The dialogues too help in their way and thus gradually a situation is built up till finally when she takes the wrong pills we find that there is nothing abnormal in her action, and certainly not a forced situation for the purposes of the story. In a stage play such repeated actions in the beginning might have escaped the attention of the audience as so much irrelevant stage business. But here, with extremely effective lightings and camera an CHARLIE in "India To-Day" a Ranjit Picture. gles no member of the audience could scarcely miss the point that was being driven home gradually. And so with the help of the script writer and the cinematographer, the director carried home a very vital link in the building of his story, something which would have been very difficult for him on the stage, where possibly the only means would have been dialogues repeated over and over again. IMPORTANCE OF PRESENTATION In such shots pressing home the importance of some apparently minor event the position of the camera plays a very vital part. But the director must either be the artist to realize its value, or he must leave it to his fellow artist, the cinematographer to make his compositions effective. In a similar way the settings and costumes also play their respec tive roles, but it is of the utmost importance that every one on whom lies this responsibility must be thoroughly conversant with the spirit of the drama. And it is the director's duty to take them into his confidence and infuse them with this spirit. Of course over all these workers the director's authority is unchallenged. There can be no two opinions about this. But a word of caution must be uttered lest we are misunderstood. The director controls and guides his fellows. He is their general but not the old fashioned one that goes to fight his battles single-handed. Here he has his lieutenants to do all the different bits of work that go to make a complete motion picture, and which bits it is his duty to see have been perfectly co-ordinated. It did very well for him on the stage to see that every actor delivered his lines properly or that the prompter was there when necessary. In a motion picture, as we have said, more than the presentation itself is the technique of that presentation. If the problem is bigger it has also been simplified in asmuch as here there is an artist in each different sphere to help him and make his task easier. Let the director, therefore, take advantage of all these silent workers, let him have more faith on his actors, and let him rely more on that great army of friends, the technicians, for we can assure him that every one of them is as eager as he is to make his picture an unqualified success. And it is because so many of our directors fail to seek help from these fellow workers, either on account of ignorance or of a superiority complex which some of them acquire as a result of a few flukes, that they miss the very essentials that constitute the primary ethics of screen presentation. And every picture which such a director makes, goes only to swell the list of box-office flops. Let, therefore, our directors LEARN. 49